Align Your Marketing and Sales Teams
Four Steps to Align Your Marketing and Sales Teams
The tasks and personalities of marketing and sales professionals are usually very different, which can make synergy difficult to achieve. Here are four small steps you can take to get these key players on the same page.
Make Joint Meetings and Activities Between Marketing and Sales Teams a Regular Event
Chances are, your marketing team doesn’t know much about the day-to-day challenges faced by your sales team. Likewise, sales probably has little to no idea how marketing develops strategies for lead generation. Regular, well-defined meetings between these groups will help foster understanding and develop common objectives. Use these meetings to identify and overcome shared obstacles and set strategies for achieving company goals.
Get Great Minds Thinking Alike on Lead Quality
It’s critical that marketing and sales jointly determine what makes a good lead, and when a good lead is ready for sales. This is one of those “sore spots” in the sales-marketing relationship. When you’ve got these two agreeing on when a lead becomes an actual opportunity (and at what point one’s responsibility ends and the other’s begins), you’ve got a true sales and marketing TEAM working together to make things happen.
A Day in the Life
Have marketing regularly sit in (or listen in) on some sales presentations. Also, have salespeople participate in monthly or quarterly marketing strategy and creative development meetings. A sales-marketing collaboration of this type will often yield surprising results that benefit not only the professional relationship between the two but also the company’s bottom line. I recommend making this step a standard operating procedure.
Human Relationships Matter; Nurture Them
We’ve talked about how you, as the owner of the business or other member of the C-suite, can structure initiatives to help align your marketing and sales teams. Now it’s time to think beyond your business’ four walls for ways to get these two mixing on a different level. Whether it’s an occasional beer-and-pizza night at a local pub or a planned quarterly get-together that’s strictly for fun, at least several times a year your people need to remind themselves that the “other guys” are just people, too. We all know that customers do business with people they know, like, and trust. Isn’t it time your marketing and sales teams got to know, like, and trust one another? It’s your job to facilitate that – for them, and for the health of your company.
WhiteHOT, Inc. is led by owner Phil Clouser, a seasoned creative director with over 20 years in sales and marketing. Whether you’re doing a full-blown campaign or a single project, we do it more competitively than the big agencies. That’s the advantage of our streamlined, boutique approach. We are aggressive as well as responsive. We’ll meet with you, analyze your goals and expectations, design your project, and expedite it before the “big guys” assign a team and traffic number. Call Phil today at (609) 429-2972 to get the best value for your money, without the aggravation!